


Symphony

by ParadoxinMotion



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Armin is a poetic little shit when he wants to be, Dorks in Love, Eremin Week, M/M, Romance and stuff I guess, shameless fluff, very little plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-26 03:40:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3835630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadoxinMotion/pseuds/ParadoxinMotion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was never a decision to be made in the first place. The knowledge was always there; as if dormant, waiting to appear in his consciousness. It is as obvious as the ways Eren tells him You are mine without words, and there are so many of them. So many different forms and methods of telling another person how wholly you are, and always will be, theirs. </p><p>Or, an Eremin drabbles series of orchestral proportions. </p><p>For the prompt, 'First Time'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Symphony

**Author's Note:**

> A few drabbles as my contribution to Eremin week. This was great fun to write, even if not my best. Personally, I'm always happy to write about these two dorks in love. <3

Neither of them remember the first time they meet. They are young, no more than two and three, and their mothers are close. They let their children play together on the living room floor, watching absentmindedly in case one loses their limited equilibrium.

Eren is bossy. Always taking different toys, always going after the thing he wants. He plows over many a plasticine tractor, and knocks over Armin’s precariously built block towers just as often. He drools over everything, and seems proud of that fact as he lifts a wooden block slathered in his DNA and presents it to the tiny blonde boy beside him.

Armin takes it in one of his chubby hands, blue eyes lighting up with wonder as he inspects it for a moment. Then, in the way children are prone to do, he promptly shoves it in his own mouth and burbles happily.

Their parents sitting above them on the couch roll their eyes, reaching down to remove the bacteria-clad toy.

Armin bursts into tears, his little gums aching from where the wooden block was so ruthlessly taken, and Eren squalls unapologetically as he is given another block, this one clean and dry.

Their mothers feed them side by side, distinguishing their bottles in the shade of light blue and deep green. The children sprawl over the space they’re afforded, anxious to reach everything around them. Each other’s arms, their food, their mothers clothing.

This is not a story about magnetic forces pulling people together. This a story about two people who made choices consciously; unapologetically. Not all of them were the right ones.

But for now, they are only children. They play together again, and again. Carla Jaeger is helplessly charmed by the tiny boy with the French name and the soft blonde hair.

Eren doesn’t think much about him at all, except that he seems to like it when he offers Armin saliva-covered wooden blocks.

 

 

The first time they fight, they are seven and eight respectively. Eren wants to play tag, Armin wants to swim in the inflatable pool. They glare at each other from a distance and make childish promises about never exchanging words again.

This vow is broken some five minutes later when Armin’s mother comes outside, offering peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and cold plastic cups of lemonade. Brightly coloured straws poke out of them.

Both boys run to receive the offered treat, crowding onto the single wooden bench to grab their plates. They sit, side by side, soaking up in the warm sunshine and cooling their hasty tempers. After a few moments of noisy chewing, Eren looks over at Armin, a foot or two away.

“Your mom makes good food,” he informs.

Armin nods, taking a moment to swallow his sandwich bite, because he isn’t impolite. “She’s the best cook in the whole world,” he intones, voice solemn.

Eren breaks into a gap-toothed smile. “My mommy doesn’t cook much. My dad likes to do it.”

Armin nodded, considering the information as he drank his lemonade. “What kind of stuff do you guys eat?”

“Basically anything.”

Another shared nod. Eren finishes his sandwich, wiping tanned fingers with dirt-caked nails using a paper napkin.

“Your pool looks kind of fun,” he says, not looking up.

Armin nods exuberantly. “It’s _tons_ of fun! My daddy lets me swim in it all by myself.”

Eren looks doubtful, but he nods resolutely and steals a glance at the red, rubber contraption with blue flowers on it. “Okay.”

Armin beams, and runs inside to get an extra swimsuit with his mother’s help.

 

 

The first day of school is always a frightening one. New people, new teachers, new rooms. But Eren finds himself far less afraid of starting third grade than he would be if the small blonde boy trotting at his side wasn’t there. Armin carries a small, lightweight backpack in grey and green on his back, hair combed carefully back, small face serious. Eren adjusts his own bag, red and black, and gives him a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, Armin. You’re super smart. You’re going to like this grade.”

Armin nods, expression doubtful, but he seems reassured by his words and looks up at the brunette. “What about you?” He wonders, stopping at the Bus Stop and looking both ways for the approaching vehicle.

Eren shrugs, running a hand through his hair. This nervous habit will frustrate his mother for years. “I dunno. I don’t like school that much. I know it’s going to help me know things and be smart, but it’s so looonnnng and some of the teachers are stupid.”

Armin smiles, soft lips touching and curving away from each other, a shy hand reaching up to take Eren’s. “It’s only half a day today, right? That isn’t very long.”

“I guess,” Eren agrees dubiously, noting that Armin has yet to let go of his hand.

It’s a warm pressure there that he feels, even when the smaller boy is forced to let go.

 

 

The first time Armin thinks that a person is beautiful is when he sees Eren dead asleep on his couch, drool leaking onto his chin. Late afternoon sunlight filters through decrepit blinds, and the house is calm and still from where Armin’s parents haven’t gotten home yet from work.

They’ve both been studying feverishly for finals, and since Eren tends to study in bursts of dedication and then putter out, Armin’s been finding himself inviting the other boy over more often then not. At least then he has a chance at keeping a tab on how Eren’s doing, and how _much_ of one thing he’s doing. He’s nothing if not passionate, but with great passion comes…great exhaustion.

Not to say that Armin doesn’t, to an extent, _enjoy_ seeing Eren passed out, limbs heavy with sleep, face peaceful as he snores. There’s something equally comforting and relaxing about seeing him petered out and letting himself drop off, even if it’s accidental every time.

And it is, very much an accident, when Armin’s chest stutters and whispers into his mind, _he’s so beautiful._

Armin swallows, ignoring the way it makes his throat ache, and goes into the other room to get his books. Calculators, pencils, erasers, a thousand notes scribbled onto yellow, curly-edged sticky notes.

Armin sits on the edge of the couch and opens his books, and proceeds to study Eren’s face until he wakes up, twenty minutes later.

 

 

The first time the two of them swim, Armin is scared and Eren is radiating exuberance. When the dark-haired boy had told him that he fully intended to take him swimming, now that it’s summer, Armin had spent his free time reading all about it. Swimming, what it looks like, what it _should_ look like, basic strokes, and the like. His YouTube history is full of oddly-titled videos such as _How to Breast-Stroke Like a Pro!_ And _Learn How to Swim Free, Because that’s the Only Stroke I Do._ Eren would no doubt be equal parts amused and confused by it if he was aware.

But, of course, he is _Eren,_ and Eren is only aware that he wants to share this part of his life with Armin, and for that he is grateful. The limerence that makes him hesitate to hang out with Eren as much as he used to is the same thing that propels him forward to do things like _learn how to swim_ so that he won’t look like an idiot in front of Eren.

He lets Eren show him how to doggy paddle and pretends that his touch doesn’t send shivers burning down his arms.

Because Eren, beautiful Eren, _amazingimperfectfunny_ Eren is also

Incredibly

Oblivious. 

Armin has strategized ways to tell him as carefully as he’s learned how to swim in his head, and every method seems worse than the last.

Nothing seems to make sense, nothing seems to be good enough, and he thinks and thinks until he feels ready to _scream_ instead of to swim, and that kind of thing won’t do at all.

He listens instead to Eren’s voice, beautiful and so alive, as he carefully shows Armin what he knows, and what he thinks the shorter boy can do. He is distracting in his clumsy, good-natured means of expressing detailed topics, and Armin finds himself smiling before long. He grins as Eren tells him _You just need to relax; don’t fight it._

Armin takes that advice and wonders if it applies to more than just swimming.

 

 

Somewhere, there is a boy, who lives on the outskirts of the sea and dreams finding forgotten shores. There is a boy who has watched seventeen summers come and go and waits for many more. There is a boy with eyes blue as water and hair as pale as corn silk, called beautiful by all those who know him.

But this is not the beginning of the story, or its end. This is merely a part.

To the beginning, now.

Go back years and years, back to where the boy was two feet shorter and ten long summers younger, to where he did not stand alone.

A little further back now.

If you chance to look at a house close to the west side of the small town on the outskirts of a large city, you will find pictures. Photos of a boy with coffee-brown hair and tanned skin whose mouth smiles and whose eyes change like the tinkling of sunlight on leaves. There is another boy beside him, with a laughing face and kind eyes, their arms slung around each other, faces bathed in sunlight. They look happy.

Any stranger passing by can tell

That they are _so_ happy.

Let me tell you why.

 

 

Armin kisses him for the first time outside of his front door. The leaves are crinkling with age, turning browner than Eren’s hair, and he tastes like old mustard from his sandwich at school earlier. Their teeth clack together and Eren’s strange eyes must turn at least three different colours by the time Armin pulls back, face red as cranberry sauce, blue eyes impossibly wide.

“ _Sorry,_ ” he mumbles, dashing inside his house like he’s a guilty sinner trying to run from the law.

Eren’s system of justice is not so lax, however, and he bangs on the door until Armin returns to open it, sheepish.

“What the hell was that?” He inquires; blunt, forward, and a little rude. Armin shrinks back against his doorframe, mouth stuttering over the words his mind is rolling over like the tracks of a train.

“I…wanted to,” he bites out after a pause, voice thick, mind berating himself before the words are even fully out.

Eren tilts his head, a habit he’s picked up from their mutual classmate Jean (though he will never admit), brow furrowed in confusion. “Why’d you run away?”

Armin splutters, the question ringing ridiculous against his ears. “I was scared!”

Eren sighs, pushes his way past Armin standing in the doorway, and pulls him by the arm inside with him. The front door is shut pointedly, and in the privacy of Armin’s home they stand, facing one another.

“Why’d you really run away?” Eren asks, as if the answer is supposed to change.

“I was embarrassed,” Armin explains, face aflame, wondering if Eren is really this slow.

Eren’s green eyes are nervous as he pauses for a moment, then takes a step forward and bites his lip.

“Go on and embarrass yourself some more.”

Armin’s eyes are wider than the china dinner plates in his mother’s cabinet, and his breath is gone when he leans forward, noses bumping as their lips press together once more.

In no time at all they’re sprawling against the hallway wall, teeth clacking together, clumsily affectionate as the initial nervousness turns into _Oh God why didn’t we do this sooner?_

Eren kisses him until he can barely breathe; until he’s a mess of giggles and red cheeks and hazy eyes. He sits on the floor, curled effortlessly into Eren’s warm arms, chest feeling like it could split with how hard he’s trying not to shout until his voice is hoarse.

Eren is warmer than any painting he’s ever laid his eyes on; he is more complicated than any mathematical formula, and suddenly, _easily,_ he is more _Armin’s_ until anything else in the entire world.

 

 

The first time Eren says _I love you_ is when they’re lying in bed together. Their bodies are slick with sweat, golden skin draped over pale limbs. Armin’s hair is plastered to his forehead, his eyes glazed in pleasure, and there is not an ounce of deceit in his bedfellow’s voice. Eren says the words like they are a promise; like they are the truest thing he knows and all other words are a lie.

He murmurs _I love you_ into the nape of his neck, bodies rocking together slowly, teeth making a carnal vow into hastily bruising skin. Armin’s mouth opens in a reply, not one with words but one of _sounds,_ moan shattering the breathy silence and spurring Eren on.

Armin has often imagined this moment, this _time_ he had been waiting on, for Eren to say the words. He hadn’t expected them at this time, though he can’t deny that he’s often wondered if it would happen in this situation. His mind moves too quickly for the thought to _not_ occur, somewhere poking around in the subconscious where it belongs.

Eren has been reticent to say them for a long time; it’s a trait he and his sister both share. This shrouding of his affection strikes a pale contrast against the glowing, golden, turbulent bundle of emotions that make up the rest of him. As quick to fight as he is to love, watching him move is like watching storm clouds gather over the horizon, tantalising licks of flame striking down almost too quick to see.

He is a storm again, now; a mass of rumbling groans and whispers soft as the breeze. His body is powerful as it moves, and writhes, and thrusts, and Armin feels the underlying power barely contained under his sun-tanned skin.

 _I love you,_ Eren whispers, and it is a guttural moan; it is the pleadings of a man with the wind as it desecrates his home. But Armin does not feel lost; he feels coveted, he feels at _home_ in the wildness of a multitude of things he can control and an even greater number of things he cannot. But Eren is there to catch him, it is Eren who cages him in with his limbs and Eren who makes sparks of pleasure burn behind his eyelids.

And it is Eren who builds it up, who makes wave after wave of overwhelming bliss thunder over him until he is limp and heavy-limbed; a piece of straw picked up after a storm.

Eren kisses his temple, and lets the words slip past his lips once more. Armin nestles into a place where he feels safe, where he has been and always will be, _home._

He wraps his tired arms around Eren’s dark neck, past the tickle of hair on the nape, and tilts his own head up to murmur his own promise back.

Amidst the newfound calm, and enveloped in a sleepy haze, the trickle of words breaks the stillness, quiet as a cleansing rain.

 

 

Epilogue:

 

_Some years later…_

Armin rolls onto his side, away from the sunlight, and away from wakefulness. The bed jostles slightly as he attempts to draw the covers completely over his face, settling into the newfound darkness with a contented sigh. Below him, the clattering sound of coffee mugs and metal spoons clink like a prisoner’s chains, and if he strains his ears, he can hear the occasional accompanying curse. A suspicious smell wafts through the apartment’s rooms, smelling vaguely like burnt toast. Cooking never was Eren’s forte.

Armin remains a moment longer in bed, before sliding out with an ear-splitting yawn, and searching under the bed for his slippers. Tousled yellow hair sticks out at odd angles, poking gentle fun at his reflection in the mirror. He runs a hand through the mass of messy locks, and moves downstairs slowly, sleepily.

Eren is indeed in the kitchen when he arrives, a suspiciously sooty mark across his nose and a plate of several toast-corpses to add to the wreckage. The coffee pot looks generally unharmed, but that’s probably owing to the fact that Armin had set it himself last night, and placed Eren under strict orders not to touch it. Such is love-unspoiled coffee makes for a happy home.

The dark-haired boy across from him breaks into a wide grin as he trundles into the kitchen, previous irritation at the woes of breakfast making forgotten. Armin smiles back, reaching across the centre island to give him a kiss, and answer Eren’s quiet mumble of, “G’morning,” with a greeting of his own.

“You were supposed to stay asleep until I’d finished,” Eren explains, furrow in his brow returning with a vengeance.

Armin shrugs, taking a seat on one of the barstools, letting his chin rest atop his arms as he blinks at his boyfriend. “I wasn’t all that hungry anyway. But you could have just asked for help.”

Eren flushes, arms folding as he feigns insult. “That would have ruined the surprise!”

Armin grins, sniffing the air inquisitively before pointing out, “I think the smell did that for you, already.”

Eren lets his head fall onto the countertop with a heavy _thunk,_ His expression is downcast. “I wanted your first morning here to be special.”

Armin slides off his stool and moves around the island, arms wrapping around the taller boy’s waist as he smiles up at him, last traces of sleep fading away. “It _is_ special.”

“I guess that’s true,” Eren says, doubtfully, with a hidden spark in his eyes. “I mean, I _was_ already up here and everything for you to come visit. That makes the trip pretty awesome.”

Armin elbows his ribcage with a good-natured eye roll in a mixture of fondness and exasperation. “You’re impossible.”

 Tanned arms snake around his waist as he tries to turn away, leading to shrieks of hyperbolic indignation as Eren presses messy kisses to the back of his neck. “I’m just kidding. I’m glad some burnt breakfast didn’t mess up your trip, Flower.”

Armin smiles at him again, helplessly happy, as he turns to better get a glimpse of Eren’s handsome face in the morning light. Small hands reach up to touch his face, memorising the planes and details embedded in dark skin once again.

An unexpected, but not unpleasant, silence settles over the kitchen for a few moments, as both parties spend a moment taking each other in. It’s been a few months since Eren moved into his apartment, ridiculously spacious as it is, and the transition hasn’t been an easy one. They’d been emailing, skyping, and talking on the phone as often as they could while Armin finished his first year at another college before transferring. Looking back on it now, even if it had been neither particularly smooth nor particularly comfortable, Armin is contented. He woke up in his boyfriend’s arms for the first time in three months this morning, and the smell of burnt toast might as well be the scent of ambrosia wafting down from the heavens for all he cares. He feels effortlessly warm, and safe.

He feels at _home._

He will never not be slightly breathless from the way things have gone, from childhood into adolescence and now adulthood, playing out with the smoothness of a symphony. Perhaps not everything he wished to occur had come to pass, but it seemed a small price to pay as he looked up at Eren’s face, unconsciously tender and heartbreakingly soft.

 _Everything I am,_ he thinks as his fingers trace the lines in the corners of his eyes, solemn as a church bell, truer than polished steel. _Everything I have, I will give you._

It was never a decision to be made in the first place. The knowledge was always _there;_ as if dormant, waiting to appear in his consciousness. It is as obvious as the ways Eren tells him _You are mine_ without words, and there are so many of them. So many different forms and methods of telling another person how wholly you are, and always will be, _theirs._

But right now, in their snug kitchen, with sunlight filtering through the blinds, Eren’s method is to hand Armin a cup of coffee, and smile at him like he’s hung the stars.

He presses a kiss to soft, slightly chapped lips, and leans up to nuzzle into the warm space that surrounds him.

There will be so many more first times.

_I love you, I love you, I love you._

 

**Author's Note:**

> The kitchen in the last drabble, in my mind, looked something like [this](https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTnkofw1tst4s9FgzqpD9CytLMH_8i_WwLrTeUkTiliow4jE98jjA)
> 
> Also, if you want a cute song that helped me out when writing this, try [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlMmLWv8sNk)


End file.
